Piper morgan in charge, p.1
Piper Morgan in Charge!, page 1
For Hollis, the inspiration for every young character I write
CHAPTER
1
I usually love the first day of school.
Only it was March instead of September. And I was going to a new school, not my old one.
And my mom would be working there.
We were staying with my nanna because my mom got a new job. Just a few weeks ago she was working in the circus, where there were elephants and clowns and lots of fun things.
But then Mom got this new job where she’d be working in the principal’s office, helping out with a big project they were doing, and other office-y things. It did not sound as fun as seeing Ella the Elephant every day. And I don’t think there will be clowns in the principal’s office, but Nanna said I could be wrong about that.
“Piper! Breakfast!” Mom yelled.
I grabbed my new, pink sparkly backpack and bounced my way to the kitchen. I bounce when I’m excited about something, and I’m super-duper excited about Nanna’s breakfast. She makes pancakes with bananas baked right into them. Plus, she has hot syrup.
“Don’t you just look all bright and shiny, Piper.” Nanna smiles.
If Nanna thought my smiling face was bright and shiny, wait until she saw my backpack. I grinned. That was the shiniest part of my whole outfit—and my favorite. I saw the pancakes and squeezed into my chair, backpack and all.
“No backpacks at the table,” my mom said from behind me. “Pancakes. Yummy. We can’t eat like this every morning, though.”
I put my backpack on the floor next to me. But I made sure my foot touched it. That way I’d know if Oreo tried to take it. Oreo is Nanna’s puppy. He’s named Oreo because he’s black and white, like Oreo cookies.
“Mom,” I said, after swallowing my first big bite of pancakes. “Can I ride the school bus?”
“No, Piper,” Mom said. She gave Nanna a look. When two grown-ups look at each other like that, it’s like they’re talking about you without talking.
“Your mom’s driving you to school today,” Nanna said as she brought over the last plateful of pancakes she’d made. “Maybe you’ll be able to be your mom’s helper. Won’t that be fun?”
“A helper like you were in the circus,” Mom explained. “You had fun doing that, right, Piper? And you might make some new friends. First you have to go to class, though.”
I actually had liked it when Mom was working for the circus. Besides meeting all the animals and clowns, I was part of the Little Explorers—a bunch of the other kids whose moms and dads worked for the circus too—and even though I wasn’t the greatest dancer or ringleader, I still had a lot of fun.
“I would be a good helper,” I said.
Mom leaned forward to give me a quick kiss on the forehead. “You were so good with the other kids in the circus, the principal might let you help in the office when he hears about it.”
That news was good enough to make me set my fork down. I bounced up and down in my chair, but just a little. Not enough to make the chair move.
“Yay!” I said. “Can I answer phones?” I could picture myself in a big chair, answering Very Important Phone Calls.
Mom and Nanna looked at each other and shared one of those isn’t she cute? smiles. Isn’t she cute? smiles are my favorite kinds of smiles.
“We’ll see, Piper,” Mom said. “Come on, let’s go to your first day of school!”
Class Fact #1
The first school bus ever was a horse-drawn carriage. That means you climbed in the back of the cart and a horse pulled you all the way to school. It was called a “kid hack” because “hack” is short for “hackney carriage.”
Some kid hacks had one long bench on each side, so all the kids rode to school facing the kids on the other bench. You climbed in from the back so that you wouldn’t scare the horses. That meant you couldn’t pet the horses either, which would have been the fun part about having a horse pull you to school.
Still, buses with engines are better. Mostly because they have air conditioners and heaters.
CHAPTER
2
My eyes got wide as Mom drove into the parking lot of my new school. It was humongous. My last school was just a small one. Mom said that was because this school was four billion miles from Nanna’s house, and a lot of the other towns near Nanna had kids who went to this school too. I don’t think it was really four billion miles. That would take at least an hour to drive. We only drove for exactly forty-two minutes.
“Even though it looks big, Piper, don’t be nervous,” Mom said, squeezing my hand. “I think you are going to like it here.”
Inside, the school looked even bigger. There were really high ceilings and big windows, with lots of art and cool posters everywhere.
“Come on, Piper,” Mom said as I stopped to take a look at a flower picture. “We need to go to the principal’s office to get you all settled.”
The principal’s office was a small area at the front of the school. A principal’s office wasn’t a good place to be unless your mom worked there. Then it was fun.
When we first walked in, I saw a girl sitting in one of the chairs. In my old school those were the trouble chairs. When you got in trouble, you had to wait there until the principal came out and got you. I only had to sit in those chairs once, and it was because Pauly Nichols was making fun of me. When I decided to tease him right back, the principal thought it was “fighting.” I said I was just making things even.
This girl didn’t look happy. I decided I’d be nice to her. Maybe she’d feel better if I told her a funny story.
“Wait here,” Mom said, pointing to the trouble chairs.
I frowned. I didn’t want to wait in the trouble chairs. People would think I was in trouble.
But then I remembered the girl. She needed someone to make her feel better. I plopped down next to her.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Piper Morgan. I got in trouble once too.”
“I’m not in trouble,” she told me.
“Oh.”
“He’s my dad.”
She was pointing to the door that had a sign on it. PRINCIPAL, the black letters on the gold sign told me.
Principal. Principals could be dads?
“I’m his helper bee,” the girl boasted. “Watch.”
The girl hopped up and ran over to a door that flipped away when she pushed on it. That let her go behind the desk. Only I couldn’t see her anymore.
I got up and followed her.
The flippy door was easy to push open. Too easy, I guess. I flipped it and it came back to me, almost hitting me. I had to jump back.
Once I got past the door, I was behind the desk. I was back there, like someone who worked there.
“Lily, what are you doing back here?” a woman asked. I couldn’t see anyone at first, but then I saw a woman with pink hair. Pink hair! I didn’t even see that in the circus.
“Working,” the girl who was the principal’s daughter said. She must be Lily. Lily couldn’t reach the counter, though, so working was just standing on her tippy-toes and stretching really far to try to reach the stapler.
“Chairs help you reach things,” I told Lily. I found a roll-y chair and pulled it over. “They make you taller.”
I’d learned that at my house. Sometimes when Mom was doing something, she’d pull a chair over and stand on it to get things out of high cabinets. Like cereal. Or bowls. Or the Play-Doh.
Only, I forgot one thing when I was pulling the chair over. Chairs in houses don’t have wheels. Chairs in offices sometimes do. It makes them easier to roll around, but not so easy to stand on.
I started to get up on the chair, but then it got all roll-y. I fell back into the chair and squaled as I went whoosh all the way across the floor. It was so fun.
But then something bad happened. The chair slammed into a big cabinet of papers and files, and things went flying all over the place. The chair stopped, but it was too late. It had already made the biggest mess ever.
I heard the principal’s office door open right as the pink-haired lady appeared, her eyebrows all squiggled with concern.
“She did it!” I heard Lily yell out.
Class Fact #2
Standing on a chair is a super dangerous thing to do. Even if that chair doesn’t have wheels. Here’s some of the bad stuff that can happen:
#1 You could fall.
#2 You could drop the thing you have in your hand.
#3 That thing could be a doughnut. Or chocolate milk.
#4 You could make lots of noise and get in lots of trouble.
#5 Actually, you could get in really big trouble for all of the above.
CHAPTER
3
Going to the principal’s office is easy when you’re already there. You don’t even have to wait in a trouble chair.
After I knocked all those important papers over, my mom sat me down in the principal’s office and said I couldn’t move until she came back.
“No more chair shenanigans,” she said. She was a lot meaner than the principal, who actually winked at me after Mom finished being mad at me.
They left me sitting in Mr. Steadman’s office, alone. I couldn’t leave my chair—Mom said not to—but I could lean forward really far and see what was on a principal’s desk. A file folder with the words “Morgan, Piper” on it.
That was my name! Backward, but still my name.
I reached my arms out as far as I could and slid the folder across the desk. It had my name on
See, if Mom could keep this job forever and ever, that meant I could stay here and make friends. Not Lily, though. Lily wasn’t nice.
Inside the folder was a piece of paper with stuff about me all over it. My name, my age—things like that. Nothing about my mom’s job or how long we got to stay. I couldn’t read much, though, because I heard voices outside the door. But I turned the page and saw a piece of paper beneath that said, “Helper bee?” in big letters, surrounded by doodles.
Helper bee! I liked that.
Smiling, I shut the folder and put it right back on the desk where I’d found it. If I was good, I could be a helper bee. And I knew exactly what that meant. I’d be a better helper bee than Lily was and I could stay in the school. If you were really good at helping out, they’d want you to keep helping.
When the door opened, Mr. Steadman came back in with a big grin on his face. I decided I liked this principal.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked. “We can get the school nurse.”
“I’m okay,” I said. I wanted to let out a great big sigh, since they’d asked me that too many times already. But the principal was being nice, so I held my sigh inside.
“We’re going to put you in Miss Nutter’s class,” Mr. Steadman said. “You’ll like her.”
I wondered if Miss Nutter would be as nice as Miss Sarah was to me in the circus. Miss Sarah was a ballerina, and she helped me out a lot when I was a part of the Little Explorers. “Is Miss Nutter a ballerina?” I asked Mr. Steadman.
“Huh?” he asked. “No. I don’t think so. Why don’t we go meet her and you can ask her yourself?”
“Can I really?” I asked the principal as we walked from his office to Miss Nutter’s classroom. I don’t think he heard me. He didn’t ever answer my question.
My big smile went right off my face when I saw Miss Nutter. She seemed nice, but she was nothing like Miss Sarah. Miss Sarah was young and tall and ballerina-like. Miss Nutter was short and lots of years older than even my mom. And that was old.
“Well, this must be our new pupil,” Miss Nutter said. I didn’t know what a “pupil” was, but I didn’t have time to ask. That’s because Miss Nutter took my hand and rushed me into the classroom, where she made me stand in front of everyone while she introduced me.
“Everyone, this is our new pupil, Piper Morgan. Please make her feel welcome here. Piper once helped out in a circus. Isn’t that fun, everyone?”
Hands immediately shot up in the air. They wanted to ask me questions! I looked at Miss Nutter, hoping she’d call on someone.
“Yes, Jeska?” Miss Nutter asked.
A girl near the front lowered her hand. “Umm, were there animals and stuff?”
“Yes,” I said. “There were elephants and monkeys. They were so fun.”
“Matthew?” Miss Nutter asked.
“Were the clowns scary?” the boy next to Jeska asked.
“Not at all,” I said. “They were super nice.”
“Katherine?” Miss Nutter asked.
“Will you sit with us at lunch?” she asked.
I smiled and nodded. I didn’t need Lily to be nice to me. I had friends already.
Miss Nutter turned to me. “Piper, why don’t you go sit down at the desk right there? And you will have a great desk buddy for the year.”
She made me sit at my new desk, which was right at the front of the room. But that wasn’t the worst part.
The worst part was that my desk buddy—the girl sitting right next to me—was Lily from the office.
Class Fact #3
In the early 1800s, not every child went to school, as it was only for very rich people. A man named Horace Mann thought all kids should be able to go, so he fought to make sure they could. He created the Common Schools Movement, which made sure every kid knew the three Rs: Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic.
(Two of those words don’t start with R. I wonder if anyone told them that.)
There are kids in the world who can’t go to school and learn because they don’t live near one, or have to work to help their families.
Think about that the next time you don’t want to get on the bus, or when you don’t feel like doing your homework!
CHAPTER
4
I didn’t want to talk about school. I just wanted to sit and eat my dinner. And pet Oreo.
“Piper,” Mom said. “Hands above the table.”
No petting dogs at the table. That was a rule here. It was Mom’s rule, not Nanna’s.
“Tell us about your first day of school, Piper,” Nanna said. “Did you make any new friends?”
“Mm-hmm,” I said. My mouth had potatoes in it so I couldn’t say any words.
I got to sit with my new friends Jeska and Matthew and Katherine—who went by Katie—at lunch. They were all the best kinds of friends you could find. Nice friends.
Lily had sat near us too, with her friend Mouse, but they did not say anything to me.
“Piper may get to be a helper bee, but only if she behaves,” Mom explained. “Helper bees do fun things, like help take papers to teachers.”
“Wow,” Nanna said. “That sounds like an important job.”
“There’s a very nice girl named Lily,” Mom told Nanna. “She works in the principal’s office too. They’re going to work together on a special project.”
My eyes got very big as I swallowed the potatoes and looked at Mom. Working together? Me and Lily? That wasn’t part of the deal.
“I can’t work with her,” I told Mom. “She’s mean.”
“Piper!” Mom said.
“What did she do?” Nanna asked Mom.
“Piper got in trouble for playing with a chair,” Mom answered. “Lily told on her.”
“And tattling isn’t nice,” I said.
Mom looked at me then. “Tattling is okay if it keeps someone from getting hurt,” she said. “And what you did could have gotten you hurt. Do you understand that?”
This was one of those “very special lessons,” I had a feeling. I didn’t have time for that.
“No trying to stand on chairs,” I said. “Especially if they have roll-y things on the bottom.”
“Wheels?” Nanna asked.
“Can’t I just work alone?” I asked Mom. “I’ll learn more that way.”
Mom shook her head. “Mr. Steadman is excited about it. He says Lily knows the school and you bring new energy. You’re the perfect team.”
I ran my fork through my mashed potatoes over and over. I wanted to eat enough to get dessert, but my appetite wasn’t there anymore.
“I know!” Nanna suddenly said. “You could take some cookies to Mr. Steadman. That would make you a good little helper bee. How about you and me make a batch for tomorrow?”
I looked up at Nanna. That was it! That would do it! I could work together with Lily and still be Mr. Steadman’s favorite helper bee, even if Lily was his daughter. Especially once Mr. Steadman tasted the best chocolate chip cookies ever.
I smiled at Nanna. Nannas sure have some great ideas.
Class Fact #4
Did you know that having dinner with your family is important? It makes you smarter, happier, and healthier. Here are some fun facts about family dinners:
#1 Kids who eat with their parents a lot are more likely to get good grades on their report cards.
#2 Kids who eat with their parents get to talk about how great their day at school was.
#3 You don’t have to have a fancy dinner to have a family dinner. Even pizza counts if you eat it at the same table and talk to one another while you eat. (But not with your mouth full.)
#4 If you watch TV or play games while you eat, it doesn’t count as a family dinner.
CHAPTER
5
The next day I went into the office with a round tub of Nanna’s special chocolate chip cookies.
“It’s for Mr. Steadman,” I’d whispered to Miss Cindy, the pink-haired school secretary. She sat at the front desk in the office. “I want to show him I’m the best helper bee.”
